Re: RFC: Starting a stable kernel series off the 2.6 kernel

Arjan van de Ven
2005-12-04T13:05:24Z

> nt model (or at least they have no resources to
> do testing [Torvalds])
> c) end-users (or those who are not kernel maintainers) are directed
> permanently to distros kernels and "stay away from kernel.org you
> wanna-bees!

this is not what is being said. What is being said is that if you can't
deal with occasional breakage, you're better off using vendor kernels.
But.. if you can't deal with occasional breakage, you wouldn't test test
kernels EITHER. If you can deal with an occasional breakage, I hope you
and everyone else who can, will run and test kernel.org kernels,
especially the -rc ones.

Most of the "instability" people complain about with the new 2.6 model
is caused by people not testing the -rc kernels before they are
released, so that they end up being released with regressions. But...
that will happen no matter what model you use actually. Before july
there was a problem where -rc kernels kept changing bigtime, so it was
hard to know which one to test if you only had time to test one, but
that is now changed...

Maybe it's a bit extremist, but I'd like to even state it like this:
"If you can't be bothered to test -rc kernels, you have no right to
complain about the final ones", sort of as analogy to the "if you don't
go voting you have no right to complain about the politicians".